


Aseptic

by ayako_nightray



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cancer, Character Death, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Illnesses, Inspired by Music, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Tears, Terminal Illnesses, Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-05-26 12:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15000599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayako_nightray/pseuds/ayako_nightray
Summary: "The aseptic white walls were my cage, but you... You were my key."





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello guys, this is the first actual fic I publish! I'm warning you beforehand, I haven't finished writing it yet, so updates might be slow. This work means a lot to me, especially Minhyuk's character, which is slightly autobiographic. I absoutely don't want this work to seem like a romanticization of mental and physical illnesses, but rather as a reminder that hope persists even in hour darkest times. Enjoy!

_They say even the air you breathe in a hospital is heavy. You breathe hopeless people's sighs, desperate people's cries. You might be breathing someone else's last breath._

_They say hospitals' duality is scary. In a room you see a person crying over a now dead body. In the next room you see a person crying because they've just seen their child for the first time._

_They say there's nothing good about being in a hospital, that you can never have a normal life in a place like that. Well, I'm sure my story will make them change their mind._


	2. Chapter I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first chapter is finally out! Enjoy ;)

Minhyuk woke up in his hospital bed, as always, stretched his arms and took his sketchbook. He got up and, just as he was about to leave the room, his gaze fell on the empty bed near his. He had almost forgotten his roommate had just been discharged. He was lucky enough, his previous roommates were gone too, but not only from the hospital.

'Ah, true...Dowoon is gone' he whispered softly, then smiled and shrugged, exiting the room and going straight to the roof.

 It was luckily too early for the nurses to notice him and stop him. Everyone knew him there, of course they would've stopped him. He sat the nearest he could get to the edge, that wasn't that near since there was a high railing which was supposed to stop people from trying to jump or _accidentally_ fall from there.

 "As if anyone could be that stupid to choose the roof as a way of dying when you have a whole hospital full of potential lethal weapons" Minhyuk always thought. The boy then started sketching the view he had from there, trying to capture the beauty of the sunrise in front of his eyes. The sky was so pretty, so beautiful it made Minhyuk feel powerless. What's the point in constantly seeking the perfect form of beauty, when all you had to do is lift your eyes and look around you?

 Minhyuk didn't understand what kind of beauty humans were always trying to achieve. His definition of beauty was simply 'something you don't get tired of staring at'. The boy kept on sketching everything beautiful he saw, from the mighty red sky which was faded with orange and pink-ish colours, stained by some blue and pink clouds there and there, to the small feather a bird must've dropped on that roof, which was black, faded with red on the edges. It must've belonged to a pigeon, he thought.

He realized it was time for him to come back to his room when he saw the light blue invading a wider portion of the sky, swallowing the pink, the red, and everything he had seen before.

The nurses were probably already around and would've started freaking out if they didn’t find him in his room, so he came down the stairs and returned to his room, dragging his feet and rolling his eyes a couple of times childishly as he didn't want to be caged into that aseptic white room again. He didn't remember he was also alone now, at least not until he saw the empty bed and the neatly folded bedsheets on top of it. 'Ah' Minhyuk said quietly 'right, he's gone...' Minhyuk didn't feel bad about being alone, but he thought about the boy who had been with him until last night. He was now free. He was somewhere out there, breathing air that doesn't smell like hydrogen peroxide. But he wasn't jealous at all. He was scared of the outside world he hadn't seen for so long. There certainly were amazing things out there, but that's the world that caused him to end up in that exact room.

 He didn't have to worry though, he wasn't leaving any time soon.

It was now 8 AM and the white-haired boy was bored. He was impatiently waiting for the nurse to come and check-up on him, at least he could get some human interaction. The nurse arrived five minutes later, and the boy sat on the bed as soon as she entered, while greeting her with a bright smile 'Soo-noona!' he almost shouted, to which the older lady chuckled

“Good morning, Minhyuk-ah' she smiled sweetly “Cheerful as always, I see”  they both chuckled.

The two didn't have much of a special relationship, but had now known each other for nine years, and both had become used to the other's company. “Alright, let me check if everything's fine, Minhyuk-ah” she looked at him with eyes that were hinting he should've done something, so he rolled up his sleeves, letting the nurse check his wrists and arms. She seemed happy to find no new cuts on them, so she proceeded to check up the boy's body, and found no new cuts at all, a few scratches there and there, but at least the boy hadn't looked for a knife or something with which he could hurt himself last night.

The nurse smiled “Well done, Minhyuk-ah! Let's make these the first two consecutive days in which the checkup went all well, okay?” she asked, wanting to encourage the boy in getting better.

 She knew how much he's suffered, and wanted him to finally go out and live his life like any other boy his age should do.

“Fine!” the boy agreed, smiling again. He waved goodbye to the nurse and laid back on his bed.

He knew the two day streak thing was not going to happen, but he still wanted the nurse to trust him and to believe he truly was trying to get better. It's not that he wasn't trying, but mostly that he didn't know how. He didn't know how to stop feeling the urge to grab something sharp and make a new cut appear on his skin. He had been depressed for almost half of his life now, and even when he was happy, he could still feel that annoying 'this is not going to last' feeling. He still was known as the brightest patient there, though, hilarious, isn't it?

Before leaving, Soo had mentioned something about a new roommate, he wasn't really impressed by that, he didn’t even remember how many roommates he had had nor all of their faces, and he knew that new people were hospitalized and patients were discharged every day, so it truly wasn't a big deal, but he was still curious, was this roommate going to leave before him, too?

In that hospital, patients were not divided in specific areas based on their illness, so he wondered about what would be his new roommate's problem, too. He had been roommates with people who had had an heart attack, people who had genetic mortal disorders, and, as for the last one, people who had broken one or two bones.

Minhyuk wanted to draw again, he found that extremely relaxing and, as time passed, he had discovered he was pretty good at it, too, so he got up to take his sketchbook and looked for his pastels in his backpack. He found them, but while he was looking for them, he found something. Something that reminded him of his childhood, the only period of his life he had spent out there. He took the small notebook in his hands, and started flipping its pages, until he found that specific page:

"I, Lee Minhyuk, am going to be the head of the most important and feared clans in the whole world, the X clan!!! We will be seven, just as much as these Xs are! I'm going to be the leader because I found the Xs, and we're all going to be a group of handsome true friends, who rule the world!!"

At the bottom of the page, under his _powerfu_ l note, he found seven temporary tattoos, who all had the shape of an X, written in different fonts. He chuckled while looking at the page, as he exactly remembered writing that. It was the day when all of his classmates had turned against him for no reason at all in elementary school, when he got bullied for the first time. He had decided he would become so powerful people would've feared him, so no one would've ever dared bullying him again. He had started crying after writing that because he wanted to have that power right in that moment. He wanted to be able to fight the bullies and stop them from doing that to anyone else.

 He wasn't alone at home that time. His mother was home, and could hear the boy's hiccups and cries, and she was probably even annoyed by them. She wasn't heartless, she just didn't care about that son she had had with a man she had only married because of his money. She had had that child because he wanted a son and she feared he could've left her if she didn't give him one.

Minhyuk always knew his mother didn't care a single bit about him, but often hoped she could at least fake being interested. He only wanted his mother to _pretend_ caring about him. To fake loving her _son_. But she never did. She did raise him, but never showed an inch of love for her son. He grew up without the warmth of a family.

His father, on the other hand, had wanted that son. But he didn't want a son to raise him, treasure him and care about him. Oh no, his father _needed_ a son so he could have someone who could inherit all of his money, in order for it not to get lost or given to charity, since he had no other relatives left. Minhyuk's father cared about his money more than he cared about his own life, so the man worked every single day from early morning to late evening.

Minhyuk almost never saw him, because even when his father was home, he never spent time with his son, he most likely spent time with his wife and with his rich friends who often came over, and Minhyuk was forbidden going out of his room when those _friends_ were at home. Minhyuk's mother didn't even work, her husband’s money was enough for them three, so she spent most of her time at home, with her _boyfriend_. Yes, she had a side relationship with another man, not surprisingly since she didn't love her actual family a single bit.

Minhyuk grew up not knowing what love was. His mother's twisted and sick idea of love was the only example he had, oh, and his father's love for money, too. He learnt how to idolize material things, but didn't know how to treasure people.

When Minhyuk was eight, his parents divorced, since his mother found out her husband was cheating on her too and was able to divorce and still have her money granted. Minhyuk has never seen his father since then, because after the divorce, he started living with his mother and her boyfriend, who had had another child, a little girl. Minhyuk saw how his mother looked at the baby and almost didn't recognize her. He could see _love_ in his mother's eyes for the first time. No one had ever looked at Minhyuk like that. Those eyes weren't looking at him, but they were enough for him to realize his mother wasn't the heartless monster he thought she was.

By eleven Minhyuk had already experienced way too many bad things for a kid. He was brought up coldly and didn't feel like he belonged anywhere. He had seen his parents split up and had lost his dad. And he had seen his little step-sister die. Leukemia, they said. The baby wasn't born to survive for long and that was the saddest and most unfair thing Minhyuk had ever experienced. He couldn't think about the fact that some people just weren't made to live. What did that child do to deserve such a cruel treatment?

It was then that Minhyuk completely lost his already little faith. How could someone create such beautiful yet cruel creatures, and then kill them like that? There's no justice in this world and Minhyuk understood it maybe too early. A child should still believe in the perfect lie the world is seen as by the majority of people. Some people wake up from that perfect illusion and stare confused at the mess they're in, try to wake other people up, but it's not their job and they can't do anything about it. Some people are given the strength to unmask the lie, some people aren't. Some people can close the fairy tale book and accept what reality is, some people can't stop flipping the pages and read lies over and over, but they're not dumber than the others, they just don't want to stop believing in a better yet fake reality.

Minhyuk was twelve when he made his first cut on his wrist. He felt too overwhelmed by his own negative thoughts, even though nothing in particular had happened. He suddenly felt the need to rebel from that sick world, but couldn't do anything else other than what he did.

 Stupid.

Silly.

But he was still a child. A child with a soldier's scars, but still a child. Minhyuk never stopped since then, he had become addicted to the blood dyeing his skin a bright red colour, addicted to the sharp pain which followed the cut, addicted to the fresh metal passing through his flesh.

The world seemed to have suddenly become grey. Minhyuk couldn't find happiness nor beauty anymore. He had lost his determination and all his faith in life. He thought nothing good could ever happen in a world like that, and in the end, everything would fade and reach his end anyway, so what was the point in going through life every day, in keeping on walking without a place to arrive to?

Minhyuk was fifteen when he decided those questions didn't have an answer and would never have had one.

He was fifteen when he bleached his hair for the first time.

He was fifteen when his mother found his body lying on the bathroom's floor, a bottle of bleach near it.

He was fifteen when he was first hospitalized, and when the nurses found the cuts on his body.

He was fifteen when his mother told him she would visit him every day.

He was now twenty-four, and since that moment, he had never seen his mother ever again.

 “What a silly child I was” he sighed as he put the notebook back, not noticing that the X tattoos had fallen on the floor. He took his notebook and started drawing whatever came on his mind. He firstly drew a child with one of the X tattoos on his neck, who held a sword in one of his hands and wore an armor made of dreams. He still remembers dreaming about that, _that_ same day, while he was asleep, but he never drew that nor paid much attention to it, but now, it seemed to be the first thing coming up to Minhyuk's mind, so he kept on drawing that same dream, adding details and also drawing the child's friends. Other six knights with the same X tattoo, all around the first child, supporting him and making him feel wanted and useful, because he was their leader and they loved him for guiding them to the right path.

 It was so childish yet to Minhyuk's mind, it meant more than any of his previous drawings.

He suddenly heard a knock on the door, to which he didn't respond, is not like they were truly asking for his permission anyway. As soon as the people came in, he realized what was the matter. “Minhyuk-ah, this will be your new roommate, Son Hyunwoo.”


	3. Chapter II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay but here's chapter 2! I hope you haven't forgotten about this! :')

Minhyuk looked at the boy. He was taller than him, had a slightly dark complexion and his body was definitely more muscular than his, he then took a better look at the boy's face, admiring how gentle his traits were. He then stood up and smiled brightly at the boy, stretching his arm to shake the other's hand

”I'm Lee Minhyuk” he said, greeting him with his bright smile.

Hyunwoo was amazed at how _pretty_ the boy in front of him was, but still managed to reach out to him.

“Nice to meet you” he said shyly, smiling not nearly as bright as the other boy. The nurse who had brought Hyunwoo to his room smiled at the two, who bowed politely before she left.

“Nice to meet you too” Minhyuk shook the boy's hand, then pulled apart and showed his new roommate the small room.

 “Well, here you can see...our beds, and on your right...that door is the bathroom” the shorter pointed at the door right in front of the two beds “...And that's the end of our tour. Not much, but it's comfortable.” Minhyuk shrugged, to which Hyunwoo chuckled

 “No doubt it is” now it was Minhyuk's turn to chuckle.

They both sat on their beds, chatting about anything that came to their minds, even if it was mainly Minhyuk asking questions. He discovered Hyunwoo was one year older than him and was a lonely child.

“And why are you here?” the shorter boy asked at a certain point, the other was a bit taken aback by the sudden question, but after all, there was no point in not talking about it. It's not like one of them could fake being alright. They were in a hospital. There was of course something wrong.

“I have osteosarcoma” Hyunwoo blurted out, not hesitating at all.

“It's in my right leg”

Minhyuk looked at the boy with an understanding look

“I'm sorry” was all he was able to say, he was used to any kind of illness, and he had known many people who had cancer in the last nine years, even though this was his first roommate with a tumor.

 “What about you?” Hyunwoo asked

“The nurse has told me you've been here for almost ten years” Minhyuk smiled.

“It is true. This place has become my home now, even the nurses are bragging about my attendance record?” he looked down at the floor while chuckling lightly

“By the way, they say I'm depressed” he shrugged, then showed the other the scars on his wrists

“...and they're probably right” Hyunwoo added, staring at what once must've been deep wounds and were now scars marking indelibly the boy’s fair skin

“Not necessarily”-Minhyuk spoke-“cutting doesn't always imply being depressed” he said, in a teacher-like way as he pulled down his sleeves again, making the older chuckle.

“What do you do?” Minhyuk asked, not even thinking about what 'privacy' was.

The older chuckled at the boy's curiosity “I used to dance” Minhyuk's eyes saddened at the past tense the other used.

“Hey” the younger said, grabbing one of Hyunwoo’s hands, slightly taking the other aback “You _dance_. You didn't _use to_ , clear?” he smiled, trying to encourage the other, giving a light squeeze to the hand he was still holding before letting it go.

“You will solve your problem, leave this place and come back to the stage!” Minhyuk continued with a bright smile, to which Hyunwoo's lips curved into a smile

“You're right” he said, trying to convince himself that the boy in front of him was truly right.

 

Hyunwoo's dream had always been becoming a famous dancer. He had always watched idols' and dancers' performances, admiring how their well-built bodies moved harmoniously to the rhythm, and had always wanted to be like them. He had started practicing when he was a child, and then entered a dance team when he was fifteen. He absolutely loved dancing, and he dropped out of school when he was seventeen to focus on his passion, because his team was starting to gain more and more fame and he didn't have time for school.

His mom was happy that his son was following his dreams, so she didn't even get angry at the boy when he decided to leave school. His dad, on the other hand, thought his “hobby” wouldn't have brought him anywhere, and that it was a waste of time, so he was firmly against his son dropping out of school, but he didn't forbid him anyway, and left him the right to choose for his life: something a lot of parents should learn to do.

Hyunwoo's team was starting to be casted for performances and appearances in music videos. They were becoming quite famous in their field.

That was when everything started to fall apart.

One of his group mates got married and left the team. They continued for a while, and their fame wasn’t really affected by the loss of one member. Then Hyunwoo started accusing a weird pain in his right leg. At first, he thought it was because to the excess of stress due to practice and all, but even resting didn't seem to lessen the pain. When he decided to go see a doctor, he was suggested a MRI, which showed the tumor in his right leg.

That was exactly two months before he finally got hospitalized, since there was a long queue for the surgeon he had to go through. The doctors had decided that since the tumor wasn't a big one, it was better to remove it instead of making the boy undergo chemotherapy.

The older boy was now sleeping on his bed, it was 3 PM and he had fallen asleep after his long talk with his roommate. Minhyuk was drawing the sleeping boy. He couldn't find anything worth being drawn in that _aseptic_ room, until he turned and saw the peaceful expression on Hyunwoo's face. So he started drawing the other's soft traits.

 "He truly is handsome" thought  the white-haired boy  as he kept on sketching the sleeping boy.


	4. Chapter III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry for the late update (again) but I've been extra-busy these days, sadly. I hope you can still enjoy this story! Reminder that kudos and comments are deeply appreciated ;)

Hyungwon had been in that hospital for less than a month now, and he already completely despised everything and everyone in there.

The white walls had started to make him feel trapped, the nurses and the psychologist seemed like prison guards to him. He always felt observed, and he hated the fact that that damn psychologist had to keep track of every fucking thing he did. He was now laying on his bed, of course wearing his super-expensive clothes as  _always_. They could take everything from him but his clothes. After all, fashion was one of the reasons he ended up there.

He was reading a book, not really being interested in it, but at least it distracted him from the aseptic white walls. The lunch the nurse had previously brought was laying on the table near the boy's bed, untouched as always. In that moment, the psychologist entered the room .

“Chae Hyungwon” he said, trying to gain the boy's attention, already looking pissed by the younger's behaviour, as always.

Hyungwon, in fact, didn't even close his book nor look at the older man, he only hummed in response, to which the man cleared his throat, giving up on trying to get a bigger reaction from the boy, knowing it would’ve been useless. He looked at the food on the table, rolling his eyes and mentally sighing

“I see everything is just as always” he said, hinting at the untouched food

“I don't see why anything should be different” replied the boy, with his usual plain tone that always managed to piss the psychologist off

“Hyungwon” the man said, deadly serious all of a sudden

“Would you at least  _please_  tell me why you're not eating?”

Hyungwon rolled his eyes, it was likely for the psychologist to try appealing to the other's soft side, and it would’ve worked… if only he had one.

“It's pointless. You wouldn't be able to make me eat anyway”

Hyungwon was the psychologist's harder case so far. And he had been doing that job for more than ten years. Hyungwon was the most stubborn of all the patients he had had. Not only he completely refused to eat, something every anorexic patient did, but he also completely refused to open up to the psychologist or to anyone in and out of the hospital, in fact, even his mother and close family seemed to know very little about the boy's illness, while his father refused to talk to the doctors.

Actually, his mother didn't even think keeping her son in that room was worth his or the doctor's time, since to her, Hyungwon was healthy, slim and handsome, and he was old enough to know what to do with his own health and life. His father, on the other hand, “cared about his son too much to let him starve himself to death”, weirdly, though, this seemingly  _so caring_  father, had never once come to visit his son in a whole month, while his mother was there almost every day.

Hyungwon's mother was exactly like him: she cared about appearance and fashion a lot. Oh, but Hyungwon's mother actually ate, at least. What the doctors didn’t know, was that Hyungwon's dream as a child was firstly becoming an ulzzang, but when he achieved that, he wanted more. He loved the fashion and beauty world too much. He started dreaming about becoming a model. When he was sixteen, he decided to tell his parents about his new dream job, and his mother was amazed. Hyungwon truly was the best son she could've asked for.

His father though, was firmly against his son doing such a superficial and, according to his point of view, gay-ish job. Hyungwon's father wasn't very strict, but he had what he called 'values', which Hyungwon and his mother defined 'a closed mind'. In fact, the man had been in the army for many years, plus he was brought up with  _that kind_  of ideals. He thought things such as man wearing make-up and walking on a runway were ungodly and simply wrong. Hyungwon didn't hesitate a single bit before telling his father about his dream, though. He thought his father's ideas were obviously wrong, and hoped he would’ve changed his mind if it was about his own son. But it didn't go like that and Hyungwon spent every second of his life regretting talking so openly about his dream.

In fact, when his father came to know about his son's dream, he got  _really_  angry at the boy. He shouted a lot, almost throwing a glass at him. From that day on, his father became a lot stricter on the boy, to make sure he doesn't develop  _weird ideas_  anymore. He became used to slapping and kicking the boy too, “when it was necessary”.

Hyungwon's father had completed taken control on his son's life, not even leaving the boy a chance to choose. He decided about what and what kind of school his son would attend, he had already planned his son’s whole life. But Hyungwon wasn't letting him do that. After he had lost all the hope he had that his mother would do something to save him, he decided he would still go after his dreams. Secretly, he kept going on with his ulzzang career, he still wore expensive clothes, thanks to the money his mother gave him, and never let go of his dreams. He would become a model. At all costs. He started getting more information about the modelling world, and when he looked at models' average bmi, he almost had a heart attack. He absolutely wasn't overweight or anything like that, but he realized those models must've been starving themselves to keep such low weights, considering how tall they all were.

But still, his will to become a model didn't waver.

He was ready to start dieting even right then on the spot, and that's exactly what he did. He didn't feel like he had any other purposes after all, considering how tight his dad's grip on his life was. So he became obsessed with calories. His dad wanted him to be stronger, so he forced him to work out, but the boy somehow always managed to escape that, being naturally lazy and not wanting to gain weight because of muscles. He only lived to achieve his goal, to the point he started puking after meals, at least when “he felt that he had eaten too much”, which was obviously never true.

He ate always less and less, originally because of his dream, but now throwing up and refusing to eat had become a form of rebellion against his father's rules, against the life his father had planned for him, basically, against his father. Hyungwon kept on doing all of these things, until one day his dad found him in front of the toilet, forcing himself to throw up. At first he believed what his son had told him to justify himself, that he had a terrible stomach ache and throwing up would've helped.

His father cared about Hyungwon's health, so he decided to bring him to the hospital for a checkup anyway. And that was almost one month ago, the day Hyungwon was diagnosed with anorexia, the day he was hospitalized and the day his father crushed his dreams for the umpteenth time. Hyungwon's father was too shocked by the fact that his son, who he thought he had raised well, was suffering from such a “stupid illness that only a stubborn spoiled child could suffer from”.

He stupidly thought: “What's the big matter, just eat!” Which perfectly reflected his vision of the world, a restricted and stuck in the past one. Since he felt completely betrayed and deluded by his son's  _silly and feminine_ behaviour, he decided he would never see that  _failure of a son_ ever again, and so he, at least for now, had never visited his hospitalized son.

Not that Hyungwon had anything wrong with that, he was completely relieved by the fact he didn't have to front and endure his dad's strict and absolutely stupid behaviour anymore.

On the other hand, he had seen his mother a lot recently, since they enjoyed each other's company, after all, it was thanks to her and her passion for fashion that he had decided what his dream was and which path he wanted to follow. The woman, though, felt guilty for his son’s condition. She thought it was her fault he had decided to stop eating, mainly because she could've helped him going through the hell of her husband controlling every part of his life. She also felt guilty because she didn't want her son to be trapped there, she knew which was his place in the world, and it definitely wasn't a hospital bed. If she could and if her husband wasn't a stubborn asshole, she would've signed the papers to get her son out of there as soon as possible.

But since she couldn't, the only thing she could do for her son was helping him going through the boredom of that hospital. A part of her also wanted her son to be healthy and heal from his illness, because deep inside she knew what her son was doing could've caused something way worse than she wanted to imagine. She was the only person Hyungwon talked to.

Still, not even she knew why he didn't want to talk to the psychologist.


	5. Chapter IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again, this update was shockingly quick I'm surprised at myself! Hope you'll enjoy!

Minhyuk kept on sketching the older boy until he saw his eyelids tremble and then start to open. He rushed and almost _threw_ his notebook in his bag, not wanting Hyunwoo to think he was some creepy stalker or something like that. As the older boy woke up and stretched ,Minhyuk looked at him with his usual bright smile.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty” he said ironically, to which they both giggled

“For how long have I been sleeping?” asked Hyunwoo, still rubbing his eyes

“Two hours. It’s now 5 PM” Hyunwoo nodded, looking around the room

“And you know what time it is _for us?”_ said Minhyuk after a while, gaining a confused look from the other, to which he couldn’t help but smile at how cute the boy was

“Time…for a hospital tour!” continued the white-haired boy, jumping off his bed and gesturing at the other to follow him. Hyunwoo smiled as he got up.

“Okay _boss_ , lead the way” Minhyuk smiled and opened the door, getting out and holding it open for Hyunwoo too.

When they both were out of the room, Minhyuk started walking towards the right side of the hall, every single doctor or nurse or patient passing by waving or actually saying hi to Minhyuk.

“Seems like you’re pretty famous here” Hyunwoo said, chuckling

“Well” Minhyuk spoke, smiling “I’m not exactly a new face for any of them”

Even though Minhyuk was smiling, Hyunwoo could sense a bit of sadness in the younger’s words, but decided not to think too much about it, not wanting to upset the other. The white-haired boy was showing  Hyunwoo every single thing they met on their way as if it was a big attraction, even when it was just the fire extinguisher, making the older chuckle various times. 

“Here our _real_ tour starts” Minhyuk suddenly said, as they arrived to another hall pretty similar to the one their room was in. Hyunwoo figured out they were going to meet other patients.

“Oh” he said as soon as he understood “Are we going to meet someone?” Asked the older, curiously

“Kind of” Minhyuk replied

“We’re going to meet _everyone.”_ Continued the younger while smiling and dragging the confused older boy into the hall, leading him to a certain room, but when the older saw Minhyuk didn’t enter the room but just passed it by, he became even more confused

“I thought you said _everyone_?”

“Namjoo, thirteen years old, leukemia” the younger said “We’re not entering all of these rooms, but I’m going to introduce you everyone, is that fine?” Minhyuk said, biting on his lower lip. Hyunwoo was puzzled at how insecure the boy suddenly looked, it was as if he was asking for his permission to go on.

“Of course it is, Minhyuk, I said _you_ ’re the boss, right?” He said, smiling reassuringly. Hyunwoo was so glad to see Minhyuk’s reaction: the boy smiled and yelled a happy “Yoo-hoo!” as he kept going.

Hyunwoo smiled at the cute reaction and followed the boy. Minhyuk entered some of the rooms, introducing his new roommate to his “friends”. Hyunwoo noticed Minhyuk mostly entered elderly people’s room, while he skipped the youngest patient’s ones and planned on asking him about the reason later. Once they were in front of the last room in that corridor, Minhyuk waited before entering, gaining Hyunwoo’s attention

“This friend of mine is okay but…there’s a pretty annoying boy who often comes check up on him, I don’t know why, but maybe he was asked to do so by my friend’s family” said Minhyuk, warning the other, to which he chuckled

“Oh, come on, how annoying can someone be for you to _warn_ me about them?” Minhyuk giggled

“Don’t tell me I hadn’t warned you” and both of them entered.

Minhyuk smiled brightly when he saw the person he was looking for, and so did the smaller boy, who ran out of his bed and jumped right into Minhyuk’s arms

“Minhyuk-hyung!” the little boy shouted “You came!”

Hyunwoo smiled at the scene, the view of that kid being so happy just because of Minhyuk’s visit warmed his heart and for a few seconds, he even forgot that it was all happening in a hospital room.

“Hyunwoo, this is Sihyun, he’s ten” Minhyuk said, smiling cheerfully while introducing the kid to his roommate

“Hi Sihyunie, I’m Hyunwoo, Minhyuk’s new roommate” the older smiled too, but then he noticed the frown on the kid’s face

“New roommate…t-then is Dowoon-hyung…” Sihyun said, looking really worried

“Oh, no, no, Dowoon is fine and has left the hospital yesterday, don’t worry” Minhyuk said reassuringly, patting the kid’s shoulder, who sighed relievedly and smiled.

After some happy chatting with the little boy, they heard the door open and someone calling Sihyun. They all turned and saw a short boy standing on the doorframe.

“There he is” Minhyuk whispered to Hyunwoo, reminding the older of their previous conversation.

The boy at first looked pissed by the fact that those two were in there, but then he rolled his eyes and just called the kid again.

“Sihyunie, you have to go now, Soobin is looking for you” as soon as the kid heard that name, he quickly waved to the boys and sprinted out of the room.

“His mom…and nurse” said Minhyuk when he saw the confused look on the older’s face.

“Would you two please leave this room, now?” Said the other boy, still standing on the doorframe.

Hyunwoo looked at the boy. He had light-brown hair, was shorter than him and even shorter than Minhyuk, he was also kind of…cute, at least if he didn’t seem as if he was going to kill them right on the spot if they didn’t leave immediately.

“What if I wanted to stay? This is Sihyunie’s room, not yours” said Minhyuk, clearly teasing the shorter. Hyunwoo silently watched as the two were almost killing each other through their stares.

“Well, I don’t think you’re Sihyunie’s roommate, so this is definitely not your place” the boy continued, then looked at the boy standing next to Minhyuk and didn’t recognize his face.

“Who are you?” the shortest asked, furrowing his eyebrows

“Son Hyunwoo, his new roommate” he said, trying to sound as friendly as possible, not wanting to piss the clearly short-tempered guy.

“Yoo Kihyun” the boy introduced himself, keeping his annoying tone.

“So, I guess you two…know each other?” said Hyunwoo, trying to break that awkward tension that had formed in the air.

“Not really” said Minhyuk “But for some reason, he doesn’t like me”

Kihyun snorted “Oh, please, _everyone_ knows him here!” The boy smirked “Even if this is my first time directly talking to him, I pretty much already know _what kind_ of person he is” he said emphasizing his last sentence, in an almost disgusted tone.

“How can you assume to know me when we’ve never even talked?” Minhyuk said, frowning, looking slightly hurt, Hyunwoo noticed how the white-haired boy’s expression had changed, and started to feel worried. He wanted that argument to come to an end as soon as possible.

“Well, I’m not _assuming_ to know you. Rumors spread fast, and what I can tell about you is that you’ve been in this shitty place for almost ten years even though there’s nothing really wrong with you. You’ve been here for nine years only because you’re a brat that thinks the whole world doesn’t understand him. You’re the cause of your own pain and I can’t believe someone as hypocrite as you can exist! I mean nine fucking years? You’ve been here for all this time seeking for attention, and even now that every fucking person in this hospital knows you, you’re still not satisfied and can’t stop seeking for further attention? I wonder if you’ll ever stop being the ‘poor depressed kid’ and grow up, go out there and face what _real_ problems are. Don’t you feel like absolute shit for not getting out of this place earlier? _You_ could be out there right now, living the life a lot of people here could never and will never live. _You_ could get rid of these suffocating white walls, but you’re still here, you’re still here because now you’ve found a comfortable little place outside of the world in which everyone loves the guy who always smiles even though he’s depressed, you’re responsible for your own disgrace, _Lee Minhyuk._ You don’t even know what real pain is and what all the other people here are facing every day. _You have no right to be here._ ” Kihyun had approached Minhyuk as he spoke, spitting out the harsh opinion he had about him right to his face.

Minhyuk didn’t even try to say anything and just left the room, or actually _ran away._ Hyunwoo had seen the look on Minhyuk’s face right before leaving, and he looked so broken and hurt that it was too much for Hyunwoo’s genuinely kind heart to take.

He looked at Kihyun, he wanted to punch him so bad, but he managed to restrain himself

“Hope you’re happy now” he said through his teeth angrily as he went after Minhyuk, heading to their room and hoping to find the other boy there.


	6. Chapter V

Kihyun just snorted and went back to his room. He was one of the lucky people who had a single room, and he was glad about that, as he wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. He thought about what had just happened as he dropped himself on the bed. He didn’t hate the white-haired boy. He was just  _mad_ at him. He could’ve exited that horrible place any time if he truly wanted, as Kihyun saw it. Minhyuk wasn’t like him. He always thought the other boy had more chances than him at getting discharged, he always knew that Minhyuk was freer than him. Minhyuk didn’t have to rely on doctors to finally get out. He could do it himself, so Kihyun didn’t understand _why_ the boy chose to stay trapped between those white walls.

Kihyun brought a hand to his forehead because of the headache that was killing him as usual. He had already taken his pain-killers today though, and he knew asking for more would’ve been pointless. Kihyun’s headaches had started a long time ago, actually, he can’t remember not having to deal with headaches. He had started suffering from them when he was just a child, but he and his parents had never taken them too seriously as in the beginning, regular headache medicines worked, so they thought the kid just suffered from migraines, just like his mom.

Kihyun’s dream had always been writing books and personally taking the pictures for them. Since when he was little, he enjoyed taking pictures, even if they were just photos of insects he had found in the garden taken with his mom’s phone. As he grew up, he started reading a lot, to the point he started dreaming of people reading books written by Yoo Kihyun. He imagined his name written in the cover of his first book, and he came to like the thought always more and more. The boy decided to combine his two dreams, and when he told his parents what he wanted to become when he grew up, they brightly smiled and encouraged him. Kihyun’s parents were always caring and understanding, always supporting their child and moreover, they truly loved each other. Like this, Kihyun started practicing writing, too, even though he was just a little kid. He made his parents read every single thing he wrote, always earning advices and good words from them, and he knew that each one of that compliments was true.

He was eight when the first obstacle in his life arrived. He and his father had to rush Kihyun’s mother to the hospital, and Kihyun didn’t know why. He didn’t know why until she called the kid in her room after the major problem was solved, or at least that’s how it seemed like. She apologized to her son for lying to him all this time, and told him the truth about her headaches. She had brain cancer. The doctors had said it was in an advanced state, and chemotherapy would’ve been useless suffering. Kihyun didn’t feel betrayed at all and perfectly understood why his mother lied to him, he was a smart kid, after all.

Kihyun will never forget that day, that day in which he replied “I’m not mad at you, mom, I just wish you’ll get better soon!”

And he will never ever forget his mother’s answer: “My Kihyunie…what did I do to deserve such a wonderful son? I love you and your father more than I love myself. I could never let you alone for too much time, of course I’ll get better soon! Promise me you will keep on practicing and become a great author one day?” she said, and a wide smile appeared on the kid’s face

“Of course! I will also improve my photography skills, I want to take _all_ the pictures for my books!”

His mother smiled gently as she said “Well then, make sure to give me a copy when your first book is out! I want to be the first one who reads it!” She said as her eyelids started to feel heavier because of the morphine starting to kick-in. Kihyun smiled and placed a kiss on his sleeping mother’s cheek, leaving the room for what he didn’t know would’ve been the last time.

He will never forget the last day he talked to his mother. How she still tried to make him feel happy even while knowing that those were her last hours. How much he cried when he understood everything. How much he respected his mother for being such a perfect human being even in her last moments of life. He will never forget how unfair his mother’s short life had been. She deserved to live a happy and long life. She was nice, kind, caring, beautiful, but she was gone. Kihyun never believed in anything from that moment onwards. He knew his mother would’ve wanted him to keep believing that something like a god existed, he knew his mother wouldn’t want him to completely destroy his own hope that someone who can save us all might exist.

He remembers how broken his dad was at first, but he never let himself go because he knew his wife wouldn’t want him to give up and of course, because Kihyun needed him more than ever, then. Kihyun never got over the loss of his mother. He never got over it because he couldn’t. He brought it with himself, as his worst scar. But he also carried the memories of his mother as his best ones. His happiest ones.

 

Kihyun was ten when regular medicines stopped working. He and his dad both feared the day this would happen, especially the older man, as he perfectly knew that his son’s headaches weren’t caused by migraines. His father wasn’t going to lose his only son, too, and Kihyun wasn’t going to give up on the last promise he made his mother. The MRI just confirmed their fears, and the boy got hospitalized. He started craving for pain-killers, as the headaches were getting unbearable. The doctors said the tumor wasn’t in a critical state, so they could still use chemotherapy to at least reduce it. Kihyun and his father accepted, even though the risks were high, they knew not even trying would’ve led to much worse.

Kihyun was twelve when, after two years of feeling as if his organs were being destroyed by the liquid he will forever remember as venom, he _defeated_ cancer. He was happy. Happy because he was finally out of that hell. Happy because he had managed to keep the promise he made to his mom. Happy because he was still there for his dad, who he knew couldn’t have borne another loss.

Kihyun’s life went on, he started to write again and even participated in some contests, his grades were good, he made friends, his relationship with his dad was great and they almost never fought, he took up photography. Everything was good and Kihyun was everyday more grateful not to god, but to the only person he knew was responsible for his happiness. His mom. He always felt that she was close. Sometimes he even talked to her, as if she was never gone.

As everything had been going well for years, fate decided Kihyun’s happy time was over. One day, when he was seventeen, the boy woke up and felt a sharp pain in his head. He could never forget how _that_ headache felt. It was as if something was applying pressure on his skull from the inside, as if something was trying to tore his head apart and break free.

He didn’t tell his dad about what he himself still didn’t want to accept until one day, three months later, he collapsed in front of his dad’s very eyes.

The boy was immediately rushed to the hospital by his barely lucid dad. What was happening to his son was clear to him, and he couldn’t stop crying. He damned his own fate for giving him such beautiful creatures as his now dead wife and his son and then constantly trying to take them away from him. He had lost any hope he had that maybe there’s an unwritten law that makes sure everything in this universe is somehow fair and happens for a reason.

When Kihyun woke up, he saw his dad sleeping in a very uncomfortable position on the chair next to whatever he had been sleeping on, and he tried to remember what had happened, but he could only remember fragments, small blurry moments of the previous day and the terrible headache. What was obvious was that he was now in a hospital bed and that he had fainted. He looked at the white, aseptic walls and couldn’t keep the tears from streaming on his face. He was back in there. That awful place. Again. He wanted to scream out loud, to tell the doctors and the nurses and every single person in that hospital to go fuck themselves, but mostly, he wanted to go home, he wanted to go back to his happy life, he wanted his laptop and his camera, he didn’t want to see a hospital room and those machines ever again. But yet, he was stuck in that place, trapped between the white walls again.

This time, the doctors told him it was impossible to completely remove the tumor since he had waited too long and now not even chemotherapy could’ve reduced it enough for it to disappear. His only chance of completely getting rid of _that thing_ was a brain surgery. The doctors though told him it was extremely risky considering the dimensions of the tumor, a minimum slip of a finger during the surgery could’ve caused him permanent brain damages, blindness or worse. The only option he had was to go through chemotherapy again in order to at least reduce the tumor, making it less dangerous. He knew it was practically pointless, but he wanted his dad to have him by his side the longest possible, he didn’t want to leave him alone yet. Plus, he had too many things to do yet to let an ugly cancer devour his brain.

And like that, Kihyun started chemotherapy again. This time it wasn’t less painful, but he was more used to it. Used to the pain, the nausea, the weakness and the whole package. Luckily, since he was older, he didn’t have to stay at the hospital and could go there just for the treatment. He managed to somehow keep on living his normal life, his friends, his school and his hobbies. At a certain point though, he started breaking into pieces. He couldn’t take it all in anymore. The treatment was making him too weak, he did no longer have the strength to focus on all his activities: he started writing less and less, he barely went out, his grades started dropping. He still fought, though. He didn’t want to surrender yet. He had to be strong. Because his mother had endured all of that for so much time, he couldn’t give up yet.

Thanks to his strong force of will, Kihyun, by the time he was twenty, had managed to defeat the tumor _again_. The doctors hadn’t even thought it could’ve been possible, but he made it. Kihyun and his dad though, weren’t as happy or amazed as the doctors. Kihyun was destroyed, the treatment was so exhausting that he barely had managed to endure it, while his father was sorry for what his son had to go through.

Kihyun wasn’t only exhausted because of the therapy, but also because he had now understood that it wasn’t going to be long until he had to face that _thing_ all over again. And he wasn’t sure if he could’ve made it another time. He was used to the pain, the hair loss, the continuous throwing up, but he never could have got used to the feeling of destruction that liquid left behind itself. He felt like a city after being taken by assaulters. It took everything and only left ruins.

All that going in and out of hospital had made Kihyun lose all of his friends. They were either not close enough to keep in touch with him or they just moved on and left the sick kid behind. Kihyun though, still had his dream. He had never stopped writing. He had, by then, started writing a book. He was determined to publish it, some day. His father was getting older and older, and you could clearly see the scars life had left on his consumed soul, the only moment in which Kihyun seemed to see those scars soften was when he last saw his dad smile, on his deathbed. The boy couldn’t help but be happy that his father was now together with his mother again, he knew they never stopped truly loving each other.

Kihyun was now alone. Only him and the cruel world. And his book. His book that had become his escape from the dull reality and from his responsibilities . He now lived alone, so he had to work in order to afford his house, his food and his studies, but he was doing well and work and university weren’t too much to take for him. Those calm days lasted for about six months. In fact, exactly sixth months after his father’s death, he was diagnosed with brain cancer again. The doctors said it was ‘chronical’, basically, he was stuck with that thing forever. There was nothing he could do, even if he did all he had been doing for his whole life again, it wouldn’t help. It was all pointless. All he and his dad had faced…it was all pointless. He decided he wouldn’t go through chemotherapy again. He didn’t see the point in doing so.

Kihyun went back home, he felt like he had to write, as soon as he arrived, he desperately grabbed his computer, writing like a maniac whatever came to his mind. Was that inspiration? No. _He had just realized the deadline would’ve come sooner than he had thought._

Kihyun dropped out of school, he couldn’t see the point in spending money for something that wasn’t going to help him in any way. Everything felt useless and pointless, but he kept on following his now seeming far than ever dream. He wanted to write many things, to leave behind him all of his thoughts, he didn’t want to be a shooting star on this planet. It wasn’t fame or recognition he was looking for, he only wanted someone to remember him. In a good way, possibly.

Things seemed to change for the boy when, at the age of 23, two months after his diagnosis, he received a letter from the hospital, telling him they might have found a way to cure him. He went to the appointment he had been given through the letter and he came to know that the doctors were thinking of a surgery. An extremely risky one, they said, through which they could remove the tumor and, hopefully, all the ‘leftovers’. He decided to accept. He had nothing but a mere dream at this point, so what could go wrong? He was desperately fighting against his own head to stop his headache from killing him, dying didn’t sound that scary anymore.

And that’s how, the now 24 year old boy is in that hospital, staying in one of the few single rooms they have there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the umpteenth late update, but I just recently got my wifi back and I've been super busy with school so please bear with me and don't forget about this fic! Enjoy!


	7. Chapter VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //Trigger warning: self-harm
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

 

Minhyuk was sitting on his bed, staring out of the window, a pocketknife in his left hand, a red sea on his right wrist.

_This is for being an attention seeker._

_This is for being a coward._

_This is for being a crybaby._

_This is just because it hurts less this way._

_This is because you ran away._

_This is because Kihyun was right, on everything he said._

_This is because you’re still cutting your wrist._

Hyunwoo entered the room in a rush, ignoring the pain in his right leg and then approaching the other boy, who was still silently sitting on his bed.

“He’s right” Minhyuk said, when he was sure the other boy was close enough to hear his voice that was now a mere soft whisper. Hyunwoo looked at the boy next to him, noticing his puffy eyes that clearly meant he had been crying, then lowering his gaze which instantly fell on the other’s wrist, revealing a red stain that Hyunwoo would have preferred not to see.

“I fucked up the streak” said the younger with a snort, noticing where the older’s attention was.

“Minhyuk, I-I don’t know you much but in this short time I’ve known you, I can tell you’re a nice, warm-hearted person and no one would ever think people are faking the affection they feel towards you. I think it’s just natural for a person like you to be surrounded with people who love you or at least care about you. You’re not the person that boy was talking about!”

Minhyuk smiled bitterly as he heard Hyunwoo’s words.

“I appreciate your effort in trying to cover up the truth for me, hyung” the younger slightly turned his head around to look at the other boy

“but you don’t need to. He’s right, what am I doing here? I should’ve left when I understood no one was going to help me, I should’ve killed myself that night, if only that bitch-“ said Minhyuk, gradually raising his voice as his gaze became darker and scarier, as if he was getting lost in his own obscure thoughts and he was falling deeper and deeper.

“Stop” Hyunwoo interrupted the boy’s train of ugly thoughts, almost yelling at him

“Don’t say such things. I can’t keep you from thinking about _that_ but please, do not say it out loud. I can’t bear to hear that kind of things, not from you nor from anyone. You made me smile more in one day than all the other people were able to do in the past year, I’d never want you to think such things. Don’t pay too much attention to what that guy said, even Sihyunie would’ve noticed he was mad at his own misfortune and needed to let it out on someone.”

Minhyuk stared at the older, impressed at how that boy that seemed so calm had suddenly got so heated up  about such a topic, he even would’ve been pleased, if his head wasn’t telling him Hyunwoo was obviously pretending to be worried and just saying so because he didn’t want to deal with his depressing shit.

 “I’m sorry” Minhyuk suddenly muttered, earning a confused look from the older boy

“About what?” Hyunwoo asked

“About making you hear and see such things. You deserve someone better to share this awful experience with, I cannot make you worry about me, too. You must already have so much stuff going through your mind, plus it’s only your first day, ah, why do I always fuck things up this bad? Hyunwoo, I-I’m sorry, sorry that I fucked up _so early_ this time.”

The older boy stared blankly at the boy right in front of his eyes: his hair was messy, his eyes were puffy and now glossy, since he had started crying again, he was hugging his knees and looked like a scared child, he was looking at him, then at the floor, then at the window, his gaze seemed to wander crazily as he kept on mumbling how sorry he was, but what Hyunwoo couldn’t help but focus on, was the blood-stained pocketknife, and consequently the younger’s right wrist which was still bleeding , that sight was making his heart ache like nothing had done before.

“Minhyuk” said the older “If you say you’re sorry another time I’m never forgiving you” he smiled as he saw a hint of a smile on the sobbing boy’s face, then he wiped some of his tears, caressing his soft cheek, slightly surprising the younger.

“Don’t cry” he said, trying to smile as reassuringly as possible, even though he was visibly still worried.

“Thank you, hyung” suddenly said the younger

“For what?” Asked the other boy, quite taken aback,

“For being still here”

 Hyunwoo just smiled , even if he knew those words would’ve hunted him for days, he just didn’t want to focus on them in that moment.

“C’mon, let’s get that wounds treated, I don’t want them to get infected”

Minhyuk was surprised. Hyunwoo was showing too much concern. He wasn’t used to people _actually_ caring about him. Maybe he was used to receiving blatant demonstrations of ‘love’ but he wasn’t used to _feel_ love. He hadn’t felt like this since when _he_ had been discharged. He just hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much as that time and, in that moment, he felt _selfish._

“Hyung” said the white haired boy “we’re in a hospital, it should practically be impossible for it to get infected, shouldn’t it?”

He smiled as he looked at Hyunwoo who was getting hydrogen peroxide and cotton balls from the cabinet, waiting for an answer

“Well,” said the older as he sat next to Minhyuk on the bed “first of all, this is the place it can get infected the easiest, I mean, you know better than me how many infections and bacteria go around in a hospital”

 Minhyuk thought about the answer the older gave him for a while, while Hyunwoo was cleaning his cuts “But then…wouldn’t that mean the place which should be the most secure for sick and non-sick people is actually the most dangerous one?”

Hyunwoo almost got lost in the infinite amount of scars he was noticing on Minhyuk’s arm, wondering about each one of them’s history, but he was quick to snap out of his thoughts and focus on what the younger had just said

“That’s a very apocalyptic way of seeing it, but yes, for as much as it can be disinfected and kept clean, a hospital is usually the place in which the biggest number of ill people are, and consequently, the place that gives shelter to most bacteria” replied the older, putting a bandage around the other’s wrist

“You’re good now” he said, smiling

“You do know there are people who are actually _paid_ to do this in here, right?” Said the younger, chuckling

 “But can they do it as good as me?” Bragged the older with a chuckle.

Minhyuk’s smile didn’t fade for a while as he stared at the boy who had just _taken care_ of him. He had done something that no one had done for years. Hyunwoo wasn’t like the nurses, he didn’t get paid for doing it. He wasn’t like his previous roommates, he didn’t seem annoyed by his actions, but rather… _hurt_. He obviously wasn’t like his mother, he didn’t stand him just because he _had to_ in order to reach a goal of his.

He just spontaneously cared about him.

Minhyuk’s mind was quiet for a while, letting him feel loved, or at least, _accepted_ for a while, until the thoughts about _him_ came back. Hyunwoo reminded Minhyuk so much of _him_ that his heart ached. He thought he was over _that boy_ , but maybe he never had been. That boy who had given him so much yet had taken so much away from him. The boy whose name he still sometimes muttered in his sleep, as his previous roommates told him, the boy whose face still appears in his dreams more often that he would’ve liked.

Hyunwoo’s voice interrupted Minhyuk’s train of thoughts,

“Hey” said the older, lightly scrolling the white haired boy

“Earth to Minhyuk” he continued with a chuckle, Minhyuk finally heard him and came back from his thoughts.

“Uhm, yes?” The younger boy replied, shaking his head lightly as to get rid of his thoughts.

“It’s 7 pm!” Exclaimed Minhyuk when his gaze fell on the clock hung to their wall, earning a confused look from the other boy

“It’s dinner time!” Minhyuk’s lips curved into a smile as he climbed out of bed and took Hyunwoo’s hand

 “C’mon, we’re gonna be late!”

Hyunwoo smiled even though, like most of the time actually, he didn’t understand the boy’s over-excitement

“What’s so important about dinner time?” Asked the older as he was being dragged by the snow-haired boy

“It’s not being late! Otherwise, the queue will be so long that it’ll exit the canteen and we’re going to eat our dinner as tomorrow’s breakfast!!”

The two finally arrived to the canteen, in which they found an already a pretty long queue which didn’t seem to bother Minhyuk, though, he was probably used to much worse situations.

“I get from your calmness that you were expecting worse” said Hyunwoo, quite impressed by that queue since dinner time had just started

“It’s so obvious that you’re new here” smiled the younger boy.

The two went quiet for a while, Minhyuk looking at whatever caught his attention, so basically everything, Hyunwoo looking at the boy next to him, then at a child or whatever just not to make the other boy feel observed, then again at the white-haired boy. His hair looked so soft even though he had obviously been bleaching them for a long time, his shiny eyes were so pretty and showed how deeply that boy was entranced by both the marvelous and the simplest things this world had to offer, Hyunwoo felt as if the boy’s passion, his thirst for knowledge, stories, art, were all contagious and traveled from his mind to other people through his eyes, he felt like it was impossible not to get carried away by such passion even after being with the boy for just one day and seeing one of his worst sides. Hyunwoo thought everything about his roommate’s face was perfectly harmonious, he was a work of art himself.

Yet if he had to compare that boy to a work of art, he would’ve said he’s a cracked porcelain vase. He’s perfect and broken at the same time.

But Hyunwoo wasn’t sure that fixing a broken vase would’ve made it more beautiful, because maybe, just maybe, the cracks are exactly what makes it perfect.


	8. Chapter VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and sorry for the slightly long wait, I've been busy with school! Enjoy!!

He entered the hospital just like a prince would enter his castle, his feet were moving just like a model’s would on a runway. Unlike what every person who saw him for the first time there would’ve thought, he wasn’t a relative or a friend who had come to visit someone, he was a patient and he absolutely hated the looks he received every single time, both the ones from the women that were so entranced by his figure that they couldn’t even notice that they were drooling and the ones from everyone else, who either thought he was completely out of place there, or that he was heartless for “showing off” by wearing expensive clothes and caring about such frivolous aspects while people were dying there.

The truth is, he did hate those stares, but he also couldn’t care less, after all, he was just there for his usual monthly check-up. He kept walking, ignoring the stares, waving to a few nurses he recognized on the way and when he arrived to the waiting hall right in front of his pneumologist, he sat down, tapping his foot impatiently, holding in his arms his medical records and occasionally glancing at his phone to keep track of time, noticing he was unusually early .

“Shin Hoseok!” Called the doctor around ten minutes later, exiting the room and gesturing for the boy to follow him inside.

“How have you been, dear?” Asked the older man right away, smiling at the boy

“Fine, dr. Han-“ Hoseok had to stop himself because of a sudden cough “…but maybe the cough has gotten a bit worse” he let out a small chuckle, but stopped as he noticed that the doctor’s smile had faded and now he had a worried look on his face.

“Hoseok, I got your CT’s scan results from last week” started the doctor, taking a folder from his desk and handing it to the younger.

The boy took the papers in his hands, looking through the results.

_Pulmonary Fibrosis._

He read. In that moment, he felt as if the world had just collapsed on him, he could barely keep the tears from running out of his eyes

“Doctor, are you sure this is 100% accurate? I mean, the X-ray showed nothing wrong and now this-“ Hoseok stopped his tongue that was now running by itself as he had completely lost control over his feelings.

The doctor stared silently at the boy he considered as a son with a sad expression.

Hoseok talked again when he had calmed down a bit “Does this mean I’ll die?”

The doctor kept silent, refusing to answer _that_ question.

“Doctor Han, answer me!” Cried the boy, still fighting against the tears, while the older man sighed heavily.

“It is not sure, since there _are_ people who’ve survived pulmonary fibrosis, even if, considering your actual condition, telling you you’ll survive would be giving you false hopes. I’m extremely sorry, Hoseok.”

The boy was shocked. He never thought ruining a life would’ve taken just a few seconds.

“Then, what am I going to do from now on?”

The doctor understood what the other was thinking about “Hoseok, I’ll have to hospitalize you. You need to be kept under control and you need daily checkups. I don’t know if you’ll be able to continue with your normal life. I can’t surely allow you to go around partying anymore.”

The boy felt rage boiling inside of him “Well, flash news, you’re not my dad, so there’s nothing you can and can’t allow me to do. It’s not like keeping me here, locked in a hospital room, will make my life longer, is it?”

The older man sighed again “Maybe it won’t, but a calmer lifestyle could help your lungs last longer”

Hoseok sighed, put his hands on his hips and looked up, as if trying to calm his anger “When will I be hospitalized?”

Hoseok was a free spirit, but he also knew whatever that person did, he did it for his sake and he wasn’t going to be a pain in the ass for that doctor that had treated him so nicely and had been the closest thing to a dad he had ever had in the last five years.

“If you can, I’d want you to be ready to move to the hospital by tomorrow, I already found you a room.”

The older man smiled slightly, his eyes not giving up the sad look from before

“Okay” said the boy, nodding as if trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing.

The doctor suddenly approached the younger boy, putting his hands on his shoulders “Hoseok, I know how hard this is for you to take in. You’ve always been out there living your life not giving a shit if you risked to suffocate or choke to death because of a cough. I know what I’m asking you to do sounds impossible and I honestly didn’t think you’d accept, but seeing you did makes me proud of you. Remember, if you ever need something , I’m here, just ask. And _please_ don’t be too much of an asshole with the hospital’s personnel.”

Both the men chuckled at the doctor’s last sentence, Hoseok brought a hand on the man’s arm, nodding as if to tell the man he understood and was willing to do what he had been asked to. When the two parted and the doctor was ready to tell his goodbyes, Hoseok suddenly stopped in front of the door

“Doctor” he said, his gaze moving from the door to the man’s eyes “How much do you think I have left?”

The man’s heart ached when he heard the boy’s question and he almost started crying but managed to stay professional “I don’t know, honestly, your disease is one of those little bastards that can be quiet for years and then get worse all of a sudden. But, based on your actual condition, I think you might be able to survive another five years or so”

Hoseok nodded and exited the room, waving his goodbye to the doctor.

 

Hoseok was only five and he already had a dream: he had always admired models, especially how objectively beautiful they looked on the runway.

He had always wanted to be like them and since when he developed this passion, he started "practicing" his walk, trying to put make-up on and always asked his mom to buy him "stylish" clothes.

His parents were always very supportive of their little model prince. They always bought him whatever he asked for (if they could) and never stopped him from doing stuff that society didn't want boys to do, such as openly showing his feelings, putting make-up on or play with dolls as if they were models on the runway. They thought their son's happiness came before everything else and no one had the right to tell him that what made him happy was wrong.

They seemed like the happiest family in the world, at least from the outside.

Until when a ten-year-old Hoseok was woken up at night by a horrible scream. As soon as he recognized his mother's voice, he got up and rushed to his parents' room, just in time to witness his dad's suicide with an already visibly blood-stained knife. He watched as his dad's dead body fell to the ground, right next to his mother's.

It took the young boy a week to start talking again. He was deeply shocked for the first period, his young mind gad probably not yet processed what had happened. When realization hit him, he broke down crying in the middle of dinner, right in front of his uncle who was now taking care of him.

In a year, he seemed to be stable again. He went back to school, his pretty little lips learnt how to curve into a smile again. His uncle was taking good care of him and the young boy decided to take up his dream again.

He of course still thought about his parents, especially about how a nice person like the one he thought his father was could've done something so cruel and brutal. Maybe the alcohol running in the man's veins had brought up old disappointments and taken away his right mind.

Whatever the reason was, Hoseok decided be didn't want to know. He was finally going on with his life and he couldn't focus too much on the past if he wanted to build his future.

When he was fifteen, he started his ulzzang career and became pretty popular on the Internet soon after.

As time passed, he became a public character and started receiving important invitations to events and fashion shows.

Unlike most models wannabe, he wasn't obsessed with having a thin figure and losing weight at all costs, even if he absolutely loved how clothes fit on the slim figures that walked on runways.

He wanted to bring revolution into the modeling world, so he started working out and as soon as the first results began to show, he completely fell in love with the gym and with the world of bodybuilding in general. People started appreciating his muscular body too, and he became some sort of a fusion between an ulzzang and a bodybuilder which, according to him, was already some kind of revolution.

He started experiencing troubles with his breathing when he was around twenty, and it was then that he met doctor Han, who became a fatherly figure for him after his uncle passed away. He started with the monthly, which then became weekly, checkups.

Originally, no one thought it was a serious matter, the boy had always had a little asthma, so the doctors only thought it had got worse due to the boy's active life.

Never would he have thought that shortness of breath would've become a death sentence to him.

Never would he have thought he so suddenly would've had to leave his life, his fans, his whole existence behind and be locked up in a hospital's white walls, which to him, looked like the worst of the cages.


	9. Chapter VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I had originally decided to stop posting this fic, but a wave of positivity made me think I was probably making the wrong choice. I took some time to go over this chapter (which was written at least six months ago) again, and hopefully you'll notice some differences in my writing style, compared to the previous ones! Enough of my storytime, enjoy Aseptic!

A few days after he got hospitalized, Hoseok already missed his social life. He missed the parties, he missed being in the limelight the whole time, but more than everything, he absolutely hated having to lie to his fans. Even though they knew he was currently in hospital, he couldn’t let anyone know  _ why  _ he got hospitalized, he couldn’t let his fans who loved and supported him so much, know that he was being locked up in that hospital because he was holding onto his last, little hope of not having to give up on his life for good.

His fans were so sweet to send him letters and gifts every day, as his manager told him, and that definitely made him feel worse for lying to them, but at the same time, it made him decide he couldn’t break their hearts. He had to fight for them. Because they were the ones who made his dream come true and without them, he would’ve never made it.

 

His bittersweet thoughts were interrupted by Dr. Han entering the room, followed by a nurse he knew far too well already, a girl probably a year or two younger than him. Hoseok rolled his eyes, as he knew it was time for his daily checkup.

 

“How’s my favorite patient?” Asked the older man with a big smile on his face. He didn’t resemble a single bit the sad man who told him he was going to die just a few days earlier.

 

“Bored as always” replied Hoseok, lifting his back up so that he was sitting on the bed. He saw the annoyed expression on the nurse’s face. “ _ Well. I don’t like you either.”  _ He thought.

 

“I have the results of your latest checkup and the situation is stationary. The lung tissue isn’t too heavily damaged as for now, thus your lungs are almost working properly. No other particular situations were detected.” Said the nurse in a robotic voice, not even lifting her eyes from the papers she was holding, definitely pissing Hoseok off.

 

“Thank you for the report, but you could just tell doc you absolutely dislike me and I’m sure he wouldn’t force you to do this every day.” Hoseok couldn’t hold his thoughts in anymore. Why didn’t that girl just tell him she absolutely despised him? Seeing her act so annoyed around him all the time just made him angry. The nurse looked a bit taken aback by the boy’s words, even her lips were slightly parted in surprise. 

 

“Well, I don’t choose my patients” she replied coldly, meanwhile the doctor was listening to the conversation without adding a word, but making sure he didn’t miss a single word, as he was pretty interested in how that argument would’ve developed.

“What did I ever do to make you hate me so much?” Asked the boy after letting a scoff out, throwing a sharp gaze at the girl, lifting an eyebrow as he waited for a reply.

 

“You’re just annoying” she replied in her usual cold, mechanical tone.

 

“That’s something someone with no valid arguments would say, my dear” Said Hoseok, who was getting more and pissed off by the girl’s cold behaviour as time went by.

 

“Do I have to remind you of every single annoying thing you do? Because I have other patients to visit too, I cannot spend all my time here” She fired back.

 

“At least tell me  _ one  _ thing about me you find annoying, or I’ll have to assume you have a secret crush on me and you’re just the hostile type” He said, putting a smirk on.

 

“What in the actual f-“ -the nurse remembered she wasn’t supposed to curse at work- “You’ve been here for a couple days and you’ve already flirted with literally every human being in this hospital! You act like you’re a prince or something like that! No one has to treat you nicely just because you’re here, you know?” The nurse finally lost it, as she couldn’t keep all of those feelings to herself anymore and maybe she felt slightly better after getting rid of that weight.

 

“That’s all?” Said Hoseok, holding his laughter “I’ll try to act like a good kid, then. Sorry mom” Continued the boy sarcastically, earning an eye roll from the girl and a light chuckle from the doctor.

 

“You really are the most annoying person in here” -the nurse seemed to think about it for a while, then changed her mind- “No, no, you’re definitely not, you’re second. After  _ him. _ ”

 

“Him? Who? Who could possibly be more annoying than  _ me _ ? You’re hurting my feelings” said Hoseok, pretending to look hurt by the nurse’s words.

 

“The spoiled kid from room 35, Hyungwon or something like that” Replied the nurse, mentally cursing only at the thought of having to enter that room later on that day.

 

Something in Hoseok’s mind clicked. Could it be…?  _ “No, it’s impossible, Hoseok. Come back to reality.”  _ He thought. But he couldn’t win against his curiosity, it was stronger than him and he figured out asking would hurt nobody.

 

“Could you possibly mean… _ Chae _ Hyungwon?” He asked carefully, anxiously waiting for an answer from the younger girl.

 

“Yes, I think that was his surname. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go checkup and report to other patients, too.” She said as she left the room, followed by the doctor.

Hoseok was having trouble breathing and, that time, his illness had nothing to do with it. 

He was in the same hospital as  _ Chae fucking Hyungwon _ . His crush since he was fifteen. His home screen wallpaper for ages. His absolute favorite model. His inspiration. The boy he considered as the most handsome person alive. That must’ve been fate.

 

“Room 35” He repeated to himself, whispering as he giggled. He was definitely paying him a visit sooner or later. But he had to remember they were in a hospital. 

“ _ That’s why he suddenly disappeared”  _  He thought. In fact, the model had abruptly left the modeling world, leaving all his fans and the media shocked and worried. Many speculations were born in the time being, and people had started assuming all kinds of things about the model’s whereabouts. Hoseok just hoped it was nothing as severe as his own illness.

 

For the rest of the day, the boy couldn’t stop thinking about ways of approaching the model. He started walking back and forth, crossing his room a hundred times, stopping a few seconds to stare at the two empty beds or comment on a good plan he thought he had come up with, just to debunk it mere seconds after, then continuing on his path, thinking of all possible things he could do or say to start a conversation with the _ ice prince _ Chae Hyungwon.

 

Hoseok was walking towards the canteen, on the path he had already memorized. It was amazing how his outer appearance showed absolutely no sign of the tumult that was unfolding inside of him. From any other person’s point of view, he would’ve looked completely calm and relaxed while his heart was pounding like crazy and his head was a noisy jungle of unordered thoughts. He might’ve been able to finally get to know the person he had been obsessing over for years.

 

When he arrived in the canteen, the first thing he did right after joining the already long queue was looking around, at the tables, the people in front of him, the corridors that were visible thanks to the glass walls of the huge dining room, his eyes were wandering like crazy all around the little portion of the large hall he was able to see from where he was standing. Nothing caught his interest though, and his hopes started to drop. 

What if the devilish nurse had pulled a prank on him? What if it was simply someone with the same name as him? He waved his thoughts off and, when his turn finally arrived, he grabbed a light meal and went to find a seat. Or actually, to explore the canteen and look for his target.

 

After moving past something like twenty empty seats, he decided to finally sit down at a table and eat his meal, first of all, because he was hungry and secondly because he was starting to feel weird stares by the people who had noticed his suspicious behaviour.

 

Right when he was about to get up again and go back to his room, his eyes stumbled upon a pair of slender legs making their way towards one of the tables near the area where he had just eaten. And after years and years of watching video after video and, later on, show after show of those legs walking down a runway, he was sure he could’ve recognized them anywhere. Even on the most crowded sidewalk in New York. He obviously didn’t even need to look up to know who those stunning, experienced legs belonged to.  _ Chae Hyungwon _ .

 

After the initial mini-heart attack he got from the sight of his idol in real life, he furrowed his eyebrows as he saw that the boy was being observed by what he assumed to be a doctor, seating a few tables away from him, and he wondered if Hyungwon knew about it and why in the world he would have a doctor follow him around the hospital. He felt like a total creep or maybe even a stalker, but in that moment, he didn’t care. He wanted to discover as much as possible without having to directly ask him, since it would’ve been quite embarrassing, considering they didn’t even know each other personally.

 

The first thing Hoseok noticed was that Hyungwon wasn’t eating at all. He had his trail on the table with just an apple laying on it and a book in his hands, which obviously triggered his interest way more than the red fruit. Hoseok’s gaze traveled again to the man which was observing the model, and who seemed really pissed off as he continuously scribbled something on his small notebook. Was looking after Hyungwon that man’s job? Then why did it seem like he was hiding from him? And was Hyungwon not going to eat at all? But if that was the case, why would he even come to that place?

 

Hoseok decided it was time to put an end to that creepy stalker behaviour and to pull himself together. He got up and walked straight towards Hyungwon’s table, casually taking a seat right in front of the younger boy, with nonchalance. 

 

“Hi” Said the brunette suddenly, not lifting his eyes from the book and startling Hoseok who had already got lost in the other’s beautiful facial features and had ended up staring at him.

 

“Oh-“ Hoseok cleared his throat “Hi, sorry for the sudden  _ invasion _ ” Said the older, trying to sound as calm as possible.

 

“Do as you please” replied the other with a plain tone, not really giving any importance to that boy or that conversation.

 

“Uhm…What are you reading?” Asked Hoseok, failing miserably in his attempt to make the atmosphere any less awkward.

 

The younger just lifted his book up a bit, so that the other boy could see the cover.

“ _ The picture of Dorian Gray”  _ read Hoseok out loud, in awe “I-It’s one of my favorite books!” He added, a sincere smile shining on his face.

 

“Then we have similar tastes, it’s my fifth time reading this book…this month.” The younger added the last sentence in a quieter voice because of the embarrassment and, for the same reason, his cheeks assumed a rosy colour. He usually never talked about the books he liked to anyone, since his mom was never interested in literature or anything that wasn’t fashion or required a little intellectual involvement, and he of course, always tried to talk to his father as little as possible.

 

“Then you must really love that book! I read it a few times too, but five times in a month…wow, I could never.” Said the older, shocked to see how cute the “ _ ice prince” _ could actually be, if only you chose the right topic.

 

Hyungwon looked at the boy for the first time, finally lifting his eyes from the book. He had messy blonde hair which fell prettily on his forehead, he had soft features and his ears kind of stuck out, but he found them somewhat cute as well.

 

“Do I perhaps…know you?” Asked Hyungwon suddenly, squinting and leaning a little bit closer to the other boy, unwillingly making Hoseok’s heart pound like crazy.

 

“Well, I attended every single one of your shows, so you might remember my face from one of those” replied Hoseok, averting his gaze from the younger’s.

 

“You’re Shin Hoseok!” Exclaimed the brunette suddenly, earning a very confused expression from the older, who was staring at him with wide eyes and parted lips, in utter shock. “ _ Chae Hyungwon knows my name?”  _ Was all he could think about in that moment.

 

“How do y-” -Hyungwon immediately cut him off- “You’re pretty popular on SNS, you know? Plus, you’ve probably liked and commented everything I’ve ever posted on my Twitter and Instagram since I was fourteen.” Hyungwon looked at the boy in front of him with a smirk, noticing the visible blush on the older boy’s pale cheeks.

 

“I’m honored and at the same time shocked that you even remember my name! I’m just a big fan of yours, after all.” Said Hoseok shyly, still looking everywhere but at the younger’s eyes, until a thought suddenly crossed his mind and he looked a bit over Hyungwon’s shoulder, looking for the suspicious man with his gaze, who was in fact, still there with a confused expression on his emaciated face.

 

“Hyungwon, are you aware there’s a man looking at you and writing down every single one of your actions right now?” Asked Hoseok, starting to get chills down his spine because of that man.

 

“Uh? Ah, you mean the psychologist? Yes, yes I know, even if he thinks I don’t. He’s here to “make sure I eat”, but as you can see, he’s doing an awful job.” Replied Hyungwon with a shrug, looking at the apple on the trail as if he was pointing at it. He was used to the psychologist being right behind him during every single meal, but it wasn’t like his presence had ever made any kind of difference. The idea of being observed just made everything even worse.

 

“And…Don’t answer if you don’t want to but… Why are you...” -the older boy cleared his throat- “Not eating?”

 

Hyungwon’s expression suddenly shifted in what seemed, to the older boy, like fear, or maybe distress. He looked away from Hoseok, hesitated for a few seconds and took the book in one hand. “It was nice talking to you” Hyungwon flashed the older boy a smile and left just like that, walking at a fast-pace towards the exit, suddenly feeling nauseous from the heavy smell of food that filled his nostrils as he passed by the kitchen. 

 

Hoseok was left speechless. Did Hyungwon really leave? Did he say something he shouldn’t have had? Did he annoy him? Whatever the reason was, the look on the boy’s face was printed in his mind’s eye. He looked  _ afraid _ . Deadly scared.

Hoseok didn’t know much about the reason why the boy was there or what scared him so much but in that precise moment, as he saw the psychologist glare at him and then follow Hyungwon out of the canteen, he became determined to find out what was tormenting the younger boy.

He would’ve helped him, he promised not to give up on him. Did it sound hypocritical? Most likely. But who, if not someone who had nothing to lose anymore, could take upon that task?


	10. Chapter IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Just wanted to let you all know that there's a few foul words in this chapter, as some people might not be comfortable with that. Enjoy the chapter and our new character!

Kihyun was in the waiting room right outside his doctor’s study. He was only there for a regular checkup, then why did he feel so nervous? It’s not like it was his first time in that waiting room filled with green plastic chairs surrounded by white walls nor like he was scared of what the doctor could’ve possibly told him. While he wondered about the motive behind the uneasy feeling he was dealing with, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a loud shout and a thump, followed by a worryingly dead silence.

 

A few seconds after those noises, Kihyun saw a dark brown-haired boy making his way down the corridor, taking a seat on the opposite side of the room and his gaze couldn’t help but fall on the stranger, immediately noticing the bruises on the boy’s face and the bleeding cut on his left eyebrow. Kihyun’s apprehension and his protective nature moved his body before his right mind could.

 

“Hey” he said, as he got up from his chair and walked across the room until he was right in front of the stranger, a concerned look on his face “Are you okay?” He asked with sincere worry in his voice tone.

 

The boy averted his gaze, his trembling eyes focusing anywhere around the room except on the other boy, aa he mumbled a “Yes”, which sounded like the least credible statement ever to Kihyun.

 

“Well, if you’re here you’re obviously not in the first place. But do those noises from before have anything to do with these?” Said Kihyun while taking a seat beside the boy and nodding his head towards his face, clearly referring to the wounds.

 

The boy looked into Kihyun’s eyes for the first time. In that very moment, when their eyes met, Kihyun saw a shaking light, an entire trembling world behind those grey eyes. A world that looked as if it was about to crumble anytime.

The stranger seemed to scan him for one second, particularly focusing on his face, his eyes. 

As if he was checking whether he could trust the boy in front of him or not. 

 

“Maybe” -the boy muttered, lowering his gaze- “Depends on how much you heard” He added and Kihyun noticed that even if the boy’s voice was deep, he sounded as if he was whispering, as if he was  _ afraid to hear the sound of his own voice _ .

 

“So, what happened?” Asked Kihyun, trying to show the other his support, even if he had never been any good at lifting people’s moods. He never considered himself a good listener, as he didn’t really have anyone to listen to in his lifetime so far.

 

“It’s a long story” Replied the boy, looking at the ground again.

 

“I’ve got time. What about we start from the very beginning? What’s your name? I’m Kihyun” The boy showed the hint of a smile as he spoke, trying to seem as reassuring as possible, when in reality, he was just terribly concerned and considerably curious.

 

“Changkyun” muttered the boy, looking a bit less stiff than when he entered the room, but still not seeming to have relaxed completely. He still didn’t know where that conversation was going.

 

“Changkyun” Repeated the standing boy with his sweetly high-pitched voice, “Nice to meet you. I want you to feel safe around me. You can tell me what’s going on, okay? I’ll listen and see what I can do” Kihyun was seriously concerned at that point, and really managed to sound convincing and reassuring, to the point that Changkyun’s tight grip on the armrest of his seat loosened and his knuckles relaxed, making Kihyun smile.

 

“It’s…I don’t know if you’re okay with this…” Changkyun glanced at the boy’s face for a second, then averted his gaze again, biting on his red bottom lip, not wanting to scare away the only person that had shown some kind of interest in him and his problems in the last five months.

 

“It’s my…b-boyfriend” Revealed the boy, sincerely hoping the other wouldn’t go back to his seat or suddenly stop talking and make the atmosphere, awkward after that sudden outing.

 

“Okay. What’s with him? Does he do this to you?” Kihyun thought the boy’s sudden loss of confidence was due the entity of what he was about to confess and didn’t even think for a second that he might’ve been questioning if he was okay with him being gay.

 

Changkyun was shocked to see that Kihyun couldn’t care less about his sexual orientation and was still concerned for him just as sincerely as before. He thought people like this only existed in books and fairy tales, or mayhaps in some of his best dreams.

 

“Y-Yes” replied Changkyun after a while, looking back into the boy’s eyes, seeing them shift in horror.

 

“Well, drop him! You don’t deserve this!” Kihyun almost shouted, starting to boil with rage. He couldn’t stand any kind of abuse and thought people like abusers or rapists should’ve rotten in jail. He had no mercy for assholes.

 

“But he’s not bad! He just…gets violent sometimes-“ Kihyun couldn’t stand that bullshit, but decided that yelling at the boy’s face wasn’t exactly the best route to take in that moment, so he kept his calm, but still cut him off him.

 

“Changkyun. Do you love this dude?” Asked Kihyun in a deadly serious tone, startling the other and making him immediately interrupt whatever he was saying.

 

“I-I used to…But the crush eventually faded”

 

“Then why don’t you leave him?!”

 

“Kihyun, I really appreciate your straightforwardness but try to think about my situation! If he did this because I didn’t tell him I had another checkup today, what do you think he’d do if I tried to get rid of him?!” Changkyun said, not really controlling his voice tone and looking seriously angry for a moment and extremely sad the following one.

 

So that’s what his parents meant when they said  _ “What makes an abuse victim a victim is not only the treatment they receive, but the mental impossibility to get their lives back together without an external help.”  _ Kihyun was starting to understand his parents’ advices little by little, and now that he knew his days were counted, and he had promised he’d made good use of them, he decided he would’ve helped that boy.

 

Suddenly, though, his conversation with Minhyuk from a couple days earlier came back to his mind, and guilt hit him hard. He realized how much of an asshole he had been. Did he want to be remembered as a dickhead who goes around hospitals insulting mentally ill people? How fucking stupid had he been? How selfish? He had let his anger and frustration take over him and completely cloud his mind. 

Deep into his guilty thoughts, he realized he was still in the middle of a conversation and that he would’ve had plenty of time to tell himself how much of an asshole he was  _ later. _

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know how serious the situation was” Said Kihyun, looking into the other’s eyes.

 

“It’s fine. I lost my temper, I apologize, too.”

 

“But we still have to find a way to get rid of that fucker, don’t we?” Asked Kihyun with a smirk, watching as the other’s face lit up and his eyes seemed to gain a tiny spark that they must’ve been missing for a long time. It was hope. Kihyun could recognize the very sentiment that tormented him throughout his entire life anywhere.

 

“D-Do you really want to help  _ me _ ? I barely know you!” Said Changkyun is sincere shock, he wasn’t used to kindness, and certainly not from some random stranger.

 

Right in that moment, the doctor called for Kihyun.

 

“Of course I do. I’ll see you later, so you’ll get to know me, if that’s what you wish. Stay safe in the meantime” Said the slightly shorter boy as he made his way to the doctor’s studio, with a smile he hadn’t seen on his own face in a long, long time.

 

Changkyun was left there, staring at the door which had just closed behind the kind stranger’s back. As he stayed alone, he surprisingly found this new feeling inside him. It was warm and fizzy, it felt as if his numb heart had suddenly jolted awake, as if after all his cries for help that no one ever bothered to listen to, someone finally reached out to him.

 

He still didn’t know whether it was going to work out or not, but he was damn sure about one thing. He wasn’t letting  _ that  _ boy alone ever again. He had seen the look in his eyes. He knew he had something on his mind, something that was bothering him. And he was determined to help him, to repay the boy for the kindness he had shown him.

After the two were finished with their checkups, Kihyun decided to invite the younger to his room, he didn’t want him to be alone if his boyfriend had one of his rage attacks.

 

“Are you sure, hyung? I-I don’t want to invade your personal space…and you certainly have things to do” said Changkyun, not wanting to bother the other anymore.

 

“I insist. You must come to my room right now, Im Changkyun!” Said the light-brown haired boy with a smile on his face.

 

“But w-what if _ he _ finds us and…does something to you?” The boy whispered the second part, as if saying it out loud would’ve made it become real, concern painted all over his face.

 

“I’ll kick his ass. You have all the right to be wherever the fuck you want with whoever you want, whenever you want, Changkyun. If he gets angry only because you’re spending time with a friend, he deserves nothing but a well-placed kick in the balls.”

 

The look in Kihyun’s eyes was so fierce Changkyun could feel how seriously he was taking that matter. For the first time in a while, the younger boy felt that he could trust the person next to him. That he could be himself around the older and he felt protected. He felt that if another nightmare was to come, he finally would’ve had someone who could wake him up.

“This way” said Kihyun, distracting the younger from his thoughts while he showed him the right direction.

 

The boys arrived to the older’s room, and he closed the door after them. He automatically sat on his bed and gestured for the other to join him.

Changkyun moved shyly towards the bed and sat, or actually slightly leaned his weight on the edge of the bed, his eyes travelling across the room and examining it.

 

“It’s small, but I’ve been in worst places” said Kihyun shrugging and breaking the silence.

 

“What could be worse than a place that was inhabited by someone who’s no longer alive?” Asked the younger, voicing a thought which had been roaming in his head for quite some time.

 

“That place being your own house” scoffed the older with a bitter smile on his face,

“And before you apologize, it’s fine. I got over it a lot of time ago” added Kihyun, his smile turning into a reassuring one towards Changkyun.

 

“I-I didn’t know…” Changkyun seemed to cut off his own words, since he was just about to apologize.

 

“I said don’t worry. I’ll tell you my story so that you don’t feel awkward around me about anything, okay? I want you to understand you can talk to me as a friend.”

 

Changkyun nodded, the hint of a smile on his lips. He wanted to know more about that boy who had been so gentle to him. He wanted to consider that cute boy a friend of his, even if they had known each other merely for a couple hours.

 

And so, Kihyun started talking about his perfect family, how much his father used to love his mother, how perfectly he was brought up and how happy and sadly far those years seemed in that moment and after that, he told him about how everything fell apart. His mother’s death, his dad’s breakdown and even his last promise to her. Then he told the boy about his father’s depression issues and his consequent death. A small thing he  _ forgot _ to mention was his own battle against cancer and the fact that he was there because he was waiting to undergo one of the riskiest surgeries in the history of medicine and that if he didn’t, then he’ll be dead for sure in less than eight months. Nothing more than a white lie, right?

 

“That was pretty much all of it. As you might’ve guessed, I’m here because I took after my mom more than I wanted to. But it’s nothing as serious as my mother’s. They’ll soon remove the tumor and I’ll be out of here” lied the boy, not wanting to put on the younger’s shoulders more stress than what they already carried.

“I’m…I’m amazed that you told me all this and we’ve known each other for three hours. How did you manage to trust me so easily?” Asked Changkyun, shocked by how easily the older had opened up to him.

 

“See, Changkyun…a lot of people nowadays mistake trust for the basics of human interaction. If you think carefully about it, what does trust have to do with the things I told you? Are they a secret? They’re barely my past. They’re just things I’d like someone who I want to become my friend to know. Trust is something you can gain from a person in either one hour or two years or never. It depends on a lot of factors which I’m not going to list because I think I’m already boring you and I just wanted to this to be clear.” Replied the older, smiling at the end thinking about how much of a psychology nerd he used to be in university.

 

“Then…is trust overestimated?” Suddenly asked the younger boy, who had followed every sentence of Kihyun’s speech, but had never attended a psychology class.

“You could say so” chuckled Kihyun, actually surprised that the boy had listened to his words and even formulated his own “interpretation” of them.

 

“I like listening to you talk, actually” said the younger boy with a sweet smile on his face, looking right into the older’s eyes.

 

“W-Well now that you know everything about me, don’t you think it’s your turn?” Asked Kihyun in an unusual high-pitched voice, averting the boy’s gaze to hide the faint blush on his cheeks.

 

“Well, there’s not much to say. I grew up with my mom, never met my father, the only thing I know is that he was married to someone else and my mother was just a side chick for him, but he got her pregnant and here I am, wow the miracle of life. By the way, I always had a pretty normal life until the doctor suggested I did an electrocardiogram because he noticed I got tired too easily like when running or taking the stairs, and turns out he was right and I actually have an arrhythmia so my heart beats too slow, but it’s nothing serious, I just have to limit stress and physical activity. For now they’re keeping me here ‘cause they want to be able to check up on me daily and make sure my condition doesn’t get worse. End of Changkyun’s story time. Pretty boring, uh?” Finished the boy who had made himself more comfortable on the other’s bed and had one of his legs on Kihyun’s.

 

“Wait, couldn’t major stress be a serious threat to you because of your condition? How can you stand all that  _ he  _ puts you through?” Asked Kihyun worriedly, looking at the boy.

 

“I can’t. He’s caused me an heart attack once. I’m alive thanks to a miracle or something like that. It was after a major rage attack, he had beaten me up and… I also lost my temper that time. Well, I’m here now and that’s all that matters.” Said Changkyun, with a glimpse of pain in his eyes as he told that story. Kihyun guessed that was the first time those words and that pain left Chagkyun’s mind.

 

“And you’re still with him after  _ that _ ?” Asked Kihyun, his eyes widening in shock, while the hatred in his heart for a guy he didn’t even know but who was causing that boy so much pain kept growing in his heart.

 

“He doesn’t even know the reason why I’m here, Kihyun. He doesn’t know what happened to me that day. He doesn’t know he almost killed me. I’m too scared to actually leave him, he could do anything!” Said the younger in a bitter tone while looking at the ground.

 

“Let me handle that” said Kihyun, suddenly.

 

“What?” Asked the younger in surprise.

 

“Leave him to me, I said. I will help you get rid of him” said the older, looking right in the other’s eyes.

 

“Okay but don’t talk as if you’re going to kill him, please…” said Changkyun, and they both chuckled.

The two boys’ conversation went on for hours and hours, talking about their favorite things, their hopes, their dreams, and many other things, to the point where they lost track of time and ended up eating some caramel pudding Kihyun had in his room’s small refrigerator for dinner while watching the tv, lying next to each other on the older boy’s bed.

In the end, they fell asleep in that same position, Changkyun resting his head on the other boy’s chest, finally happy to have found someone he could feel comfortable around and, more than anything, someone he didn’t have to be afraid of.


	11. Chapter X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! It's been ages since the last update but I'm going through a lot and trying hard not to let go of this work.
> 
> Enjoy! c:

"Minhyuk" whispered the boy as he lifted his heavy eyelids, the blurry figures of the doctors being the first thing he saw in what seemed like centuries to him.

 

"Minhyuk" he repeated, as if his mind and his lips could only remember that name.

 

"Minhyuk?" Murmured one of the doctors, confusion and worry scattered all over her voice tone.

 

"Call him!" Added the same doctor a few seconds later with a discouraged look on her face.

A nurse rushed to white-haired boy's room, and when she finally arrived she didn't have any air left to tell the boy what was going on.

 

As soon as he saw her, the boy bolted out of bed and rushed to her side, “What’s the matter?” He asked, widening his eyes in worry and surprise, he was taken aback by her sudden appearance. 

 

"He's...asking for you" said the girl as she breathed heavily.

 

"Who's looking for me?" He asked with a mixture of fret and curiosity in his voice, as he furrowed his brows, an uneasy feeling creeping up at the pit of his stomach. The nurse, though, took some more time to reply because she was still out of breath.

 

"Him" she said, looking right into Minhyuk's eyes.

 

The boy rushed out of the room, leaving the nurse behind. He knew exactly who she was talking about. There’d only been one  _ he  _ who had left some kind of an impact on the boy in the last ten years, or at least, only one who could’ve possibly  _ come back. _

 

"Why is he back here?" Asked the boy as he was running, eager and at the same time terrified to see him one more time.

 

"He was brought here a few days ago after an accident, he's just woken up. The first thing he said was your name. I don't think he remembers anything else." The nurse tried to be careful with her words, but there was nothing she could do to make it any easier for Minhyuk to take in. That was the reality of facts, and he would’ve had to deal with it some time soon anyway. Sugarcoating the situation would’ve only been pointless and even more harmful.

 

Minhyuk couldn't help but stop in his tracks, right in the middle of the hall. Even though he was obviously worried because  _ he  _ was back in the hospital again, the nurse’s words planted themselves in his mind, making him instantly afraid of what was expecting him in that hospital room.

 

What if  _ he _ really didn't remember anything?

 

What if all  _ they _ had had was gone like a writing on the seashore washed away by the waves? 

What if the only fragment of memory he had left was his name?

 

Minhyuk wasn't sure he could've taken in such a thing. 

He was used to knowing the only person he had ever loved in his entire life had never thought of him as more than a best friend, but he could’ve never gotten used to him not even  _ remembering _ about him. His imagination had started running wild, but the nurse's caring touch on his shoulder quickly brought him back to earth.

 

"Minhyuk, I know we’re asking you a lot. But he's looking for you! Shouldn't you be happy you were so important to him, that not even such a severe accident could completely erase his memories of you?" Said the petite brunette with a sweet smile, trying to reassure him.

 

"Thank you but...it was probably just a coincidence" said the boy as he started walking towards the room again, looking straight ahead of him with emptiness in his eyes as he followed the woman.

 

"Nothing happens randomly, Minhyuk. Never forget that" Said the woman as she left him in front of the room, entering before him.

 

The boy clenched his fists and gathered up all the courage he had to enter the room. 

As expected, all the confidence he had seemingly put together vanished into thin air as soon as his gaze met the figure lying on the bed and he recognized the boy he had tried so hard to forget.

He felt his limbs freeze again, he couldn't even take a step closer, even if his heart was screaming for him to do so.

 

"Minhyuk?" the brown-haired boy's voice vibrated through his whole body, making memories he thought he had archived in an inaccessible part of his mind once and for all resurface.

 

"Jooheon?" He asked in a mere whisper, not being able to force his voice to fully come out.

Minhyuk's wavering eyes watched as the doctors left the room, most likely thinking the boys would've been better off alone and hoping the younger boy will eventually remember something.

 

The white-haired boy shyly got closer to the hospital bed, watching as the other looked at him with shaky eyes, as if he was still confused by the reality in which he had suddenly woken up.

“Jooheon, it’s alright. You’re safe here” said the older reassuringly as he sat on the chair right next to the bed, the younger’s face flashing a spotlight over certain dark corners of the past he would’ve preferred to keep hidden in the dark.

 

“Who…are you?” Asked the brown-haired boy, his voice still rough as he hadn’t spoken in a long time, and barely remembered how to.

 

Minhyuk knew it. The moment the nurse told him, the moment he walked in and saw how the boy seemed to belong to a different timeline. He had prepared himself. He knew  _ he _ couldn’t possibly have remembered him. Then, why did it hurt so much? He felt as if his insides were being torn apart, as if there was an earthquake in his heart and the system keeping his organism alive was shutting down quicker than usual. 

But he had to be strong for the other boy who, now more than ever, needed him. No matter how painful it would’ve been, he had to be there for him and try his best to stay strong. 

But Minhyuk knew he was weak, extremely weak.  Mayhaps, though, even a sparrow cam turn into a hawk if the situation required it.

 

“I’m the person you were looking for, the name you seem to remember, it’s mine” Minhyuk tried to smile, but he already felt tears welling up in his eyes and was fighting to hold them in. 

_ Fuck this Minhyuk, you have to pull yourself together. Don’t be a pussy for once. _

 

“Minhyuk…?” The younger whispered,looking a bit more relaxed, or at least, less tense.

 

“Yes, that’s me. We used to be good friends, but I suppose you don’t remember me, right?” Minhyuk knew he was being too blunt with the boy, he knew he should’ve been less straightforward, but he couldn’t help it. 

He needed to know if there was any possibility that  _ his  _ Jooheon remembered him. He needed to make sure the emotions he had been repressing for the past five years were now not only one-sided, but that the entirety of whatever their relationship was had been  _ forgotten.  _ Not that the boy had ever known his true feelings anyway.

 

The older boy was nervously playing with a strand of his snow-like hair, when suddenly the tears became impossible to hold in as the memories of the days he had spent with the younger came back to his mind, all at once, just like those feelings that now felt so heavy in his heart and only weighed him down had done in the past.

 

He ended up losing himself in the memory of the first time they met.

“Minhyuk, this is your new roommate, Jooheon. I’m sure you two will get on well” the nurse had said, but he didn’t sprint out of bed as always, because on that particular day, he couldn’t even force himself out of bed, and couldn’t pretend to be nearly as happy as he always seemed to be. He was too sad, too broken. One of his definitely-no days.

 

On that 3 rd November, that windy day which was supposed to be his birthday, the only thing he could think about was how he was supposed to be celebrating his coming of age and yet he just wanted to end it all. He he had become an adult, but he was still stuck there, trapped in the loop of that hospital, forced to watch as dozens of people befriended him and died, arrived and left, while he would’ve been forever embedded in those damned white walls.

Only him and the aseptic walls knew what he had been through during those four years.

 

Suddenly, though, the most unexpected of all things had happened. As soon as the nurse left the room, the other boy rushed, as fast as the crutches allowed him to, closer to his bed and  _ hugged  _ him.

He hadn’t felt the warmth of an embrace in years. Maybe he had never even felt warmth in the few hugs he had received in those 19 years at all.

Yet that unknown boy had made him experience the warmth he had been longing for in the briefness of one hug, in which was something magical that Minhyuk was too young and oblivious to grasp back then.

 

“You looked sad, and those red stains on the bed sheets made me worried” was all the boy had said, and it was enough to make Minhyuk’s eyes widen in surprise and his heart engage in a thousand beats-race.

 

Many more things had followed that first encounter. They became best friends, they always ate together, Minhyuk showed Jooheon all his favorite places and helped him to the ones that were difficult to reach due to the other boy’s crutches. They told each other their stories and how they ended up there, they were practically inseparable.

Or maybe not. 

 

Minhyuk started perceiving a weird feeling in his chest, which he didn’t like one bit, only shortly after the boy’s arrival. He didn’t like it because it was unknown to him. He was clueless as to what that tingle at the pit of his stomach meant and he gradually became afraid of it. 

The only thing he was aware of was that those feelings were caused by a certain red-haired boy which had fallen from his motorcycle and broken a few bones who called him “Minhyukie”, completely ignoring the notion that the white-haired boy was actually the eldest in the pair.

 

He knew it meant no good, it was nothing  _ natural. _ The last thing he wanted to do was scare the other away, so he started repressing his feelings. He craved the boy more and more day after day, and with that realization came more self-hate, more shutting his emotions up and more breakdowns. It was hell on Earth, but being around the younger boy made it feel so irresistibly good. He knew he wanted to be more than best friends with Jooheon. He watched him cuddle with his girlfriend in the bed right next to his for what seemed like years to him, wishing it was him and not that  _ girl. _ That girl became the luckiest person in the world to the boy’s eyes, while he walked the path towards becoming the most unhappy one day by day.

 

He watched the love of his life be someone else’s and cried, self-harmed in secret as he had promised Jooheon he would’ve always reached out to him whenever he felt like hurting himself rather than let his head get the best of him. He suffocated his pained screams in the pillow until there was no air left in his lungs and he fell asleep out of exhaustion. Everything while he kept on smiling and laughing whenever the boy and his  _ girlfriend  _ were around, while he died every night right next to the boy’s unconscious eyes.

In the end, Jooheon left the hospital and they bid goodbye to each other, promising to keep in touch, which they, as these vague promises always end up, never did.

 

It had taken Minhyuk five years to relegate those painful memories in the dark pit of his mind, and there was the other, lying right in front of him once again. God, how much he envied Jooheon in that moment.

 

He wished he could forget them all too. He wanted his head and his heart to be as light and shallow as the younger boy’s in that exact moment.

Little did he know that not remembering didn’t even feel half as good as he imagined. 

The younger boy’s heart, in fact, couldn’t stop shaking, trembling, as he tried to gather up  _ anything  _ he could find in his brain, literally anything that could’ve given him a clue on where he was. But he only found two syllables, which happened to form a name, a name he couldn’t even connect to a face, just a name.

_ Minhyuk. _

 

Did he know this white-haired boy who looked as if he was about to cry? Did he mean something to him? Did he hurt him by asking who he was? Did he do something…worse than that to him?

Not remembering was a torture. His mind might’ve been crushed, the experiences of a lifetime erased, but his personality, his soul, his kind heart were all still there. Not being able to remember made everything in his body ache. He didn’t know the weight one sentence could have because he didn’t know _ who  _ he was talking to _. _

He knew nothing. He was confused, but what was confusion again? He couldn’t recognize anything he saw in that room, or at least he could figure out what the items were used for, but had no clue on how most of them were called.

He felt as if he was a child, having to discover the world all over again at twenty-three.

 

“I don’t, in fact” said Jooheon suddenly, replying to the older boy after a three-minute silence that felt like a century.

 

“You must be shocked, I’m sorry for suddenly asking you something so useless and personal. How are you feeling?” Asked Minhyuk, his broken bright smile shining through a mask of fake happiness and right under his watery eyes which didn’t seem to want to let those tears go.

 

“Weird” said the younger, feeling the impulse to dry the other boy’s eyes but restraining himself because, after all, the person in front of him was still a complete stranger. “My mind is just blank. I can remember words, but not many, and luckily how to talk, but if you asked me to move my arm I’m not sure I’d know how to lift it” continued the brown-haired boy, feeling more and more relaxed with the older.

 

“That must be so confusing, do you… Have any idea as to why the only thing you remembered was my name, by any chance?” Asked Minhyuk again, unable to get over the fact that he just  _ couldn’t  _ remember.

 

“I don’t know, I guess I knew you?” Asked the younger raising an eyebrow.

 

“Yes” - Minhyuk let out an airy chuckle - “We were best friends once” was all he managed to say.  _ I love you.  _ Was what he would’ve never told the boy.

 

“Wow, really? I’m sorry I can’t remember, now I get why you looked so sad,  _ Minhyuk”  _ said Jooheon with that cute embarrassed grin of his, completely unaware of how his voice ran over all the cells of the other boy’s body like a thunderstorm.

 

“Yes, we were shared a room here, five years ago” Minhyuk tried to seem as neutral as possible, making sure nor his voice nor his face gave away his mixed emotions.

 

“So…I’ve already been in this…how do you call this place again?” Minhyuk could see the effort on the boy’s face as he tried to remember one of the words he had clearly forgotten and he couldn’t help but find it absolutely endearing.

 

“Hospital? Yeah, you’ve already been here a few years ago when you fell off your motorbike and broke a few bones. I see you haven’t changed a single bit” Minhyuk let out a small chuckle, which carried a hint of bitterness with itself.

 

“I guess I didn’t really learn from my mistakes. But why are you still here if the last time we met was five years ago?” Jooheon asked, furrowing his eyebrows as the other looked pretty good to be severely ill or anything like that.

 

“I need… A lot of time to heal, apparently. Not even the doctors can possibly tell me how much, though. I guess I’m just stuck here forever” Minhyuk smiled bitterly again, looking into the other boy’s eyes for a few seconds before averting his gaze again. Jooheon decided not to ask more questions since it seemed like the older didn’t want to talk about his illness, even if he must’ve known what it was all about once.

 

“Now I’ll let you rest, Jooheon, I bet you’re still very disoriented” said Minhyuk, flashing another smile as he got up, lightly patting the other’s shoulder.

 

“Thank you, Minhyuk” said the boy, right before his eyelids started feeling heavy and he drifted back to sleep.

 

_ Why are you thanking me, you idiot? _

Thought the older as he left the room, shaking his head lightly as a faint smile appeared on his face.

As soon as Minhyuk came back to his room, he was surprised to discover Hyunwoo was still not there. It was 4 PM, where could the other possibly have gone?

 

Suddenly, realization hit Minhyuk like a truck.  _ The surgery. It was on that day. _

And he had been such an awful friend that he had completely forgotten about it. 

He hoped for the best as he rushed through the door of their now empty room and towards the surgery room.


End file.
